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Daily Archives: March 15, 2017

When I was growing up, Daddy had a sick calf who would not drink milk from its mother. It was winter and cold in the barn so Daddy brought the calf into the house. It laid on a blanket in the kitchen by our old wood burning stove. Mother would try to feed it bottles of milk, but it became weaker and weaker and one day it died. We were all sad about it, but that was life on the farm. Sometimes animals died. We took each death personally. Or, at least, I did.

Look what I got this week.

Today I have chickens in the house. Baby chicks to be exact. We brought in an old metal tub and put pine shavings in it and with their food and water, the chicks are surviving nicely. It’s been very cold the last few days and I usually would have them out in my shop, but I was worried they would freeze even with the heat lamp on them. They eat, well, like birds. Constantly. I fill their feeder twice a day. It won’t be long before I will have to cage them as they are testing their boundaries and one day I’m afraid we will wake up with a baby chick running loose in our house.

This time I bought two Golden Laced Wyndottes, one Buff Orpington., one Black Orpington and two Barred Rocks. I won’t be keeping them all. I am raising some of them for my daughter who keeps chickens also. That is, if I don’t get too attached to them. David said I shouldn’t name them, then, because I would have to keep them all. I haven’t decided what to call them. My present chickens’ names are Dorcas, Beatrice, Freedom, Phoebe, Penninah, and Ada. Maybe I will name them after the ladies in my Sunday school class. Hmmmmm. Shannon, Janet, Linda, Donna, Marilyn and Mary Foster. I wouldn’t have trouble remembering their names then!

I love watching the little chicks as they act like, well, chickens. They preen and stretch their legs and eat and eat some more and sleep and grow. They already are getting their pinfeathers. I wonder what they think when I tower over them and talk to them? When we first got them, they would go into panic mode and try to hide behind the feeder or water jar. Now they just kind of stand there and just look at me. I pick them up and talk to them to get them use to me. I don’t want my chicks afraid of me since I need to check them out for anything wrong.

Aren’t they cute?

Little. white, fluffy bottoms.

“You lookin’ at me?”

Fast asleep under the heat lamp. The striped one is a Golden Laced Wyndotte. Isn’t she beautiful?

Barred Rocks. I just want to hold them and pet them.

There are so many different kinds of chickens. If we lived on a farm, I would try one of every sort. I wanted some that laid blue eggs, but I chose these instead. Their eggs will all be brown. And delicious.

Around the watering hole. They eat and drink so much for such tiny creatures. I fill their feeder twice a day and change their water once or twice a day. They are growing fast. Next week they will be moved out to my shop and into a bigger cage until they are ready to join the other chickens.

I got this the other day when David and I were out antiquing. It caught my eye and looked like something I would have loved to have had when I was a girl.

A sewing kit.

Inside were patterns for “dolly” dresses,

a plastic doll with dresses already cut out. I wonder who was the little girl who played with this?

These cards were in the box. I don’t think they were part of the original sewing kit.

These were Disney button sewing cards. Sew buttons on the balloon areas. There was also thread in the kit. I may make copies of the patterns and save the originals and try making some dresses for the doll. I loved playing with dolls when I was a girl despite the fact I was a real tomboy. I remember getting some tiny dolls on a trip we took that Mother bought at a little store along the way and she said I played and played with them the whole trip. This doll reminds me of them.

Well, I must get some more feed for the chicks. Between them, the chickens and the wild birds we feed, I am kept busy filling feeders.